And while there were plenty of cool aspects to being neighbors with a NASCAR superstar, Keselowski couldn't help but feel the whole experience came up a bit short of his expectations.

"I just really expected I'd be pulling in the gate and there'd be women in the fountains and things like that," Keselowski said Wednesday night during a preseason media tour. "Just awesomeness! Like the Playboy mansion.

"And that didn't happen, and I was kind of like, 'Aww‚?¶'"

Keselowski felt that mild disappointment again recently after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. After all, his own driveway fountain - a little waterfall into a pool filled with koi fish - wasn't filled with frolicking beautiful women, either.

He didn't expect the women would show up after he became champion, he joked, "but I was hoping!"

In all seriousness, Keselowski said some advice from Jimmie Johnson in 2009 - after Johnson won a fourth consecutive NASCAR championship - helped temper Keselowski's expectations last year.

"He said, 'Look, man, when you win a championship, you get up in the morning and you still do all the same things,'" Keselowski recalled. "You still put your pants on one leg at a time and you still clean up the dog (poop) in the garage."

That's not to say being a NASCAR champion stinks. There have been plenty of cool things so far, he said, including a surprisingly warm reception from athletes in other sports.

Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III tweeted him in December, and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps went out of his way to come say hello when both were attending a recent Baltimore Ravens game.

"I never really expected that, so that was really cool," he said. "I'm appreciative for that."

The celebrity Keselowski most wants to meet, though - he's made no secret of his crush on actress Jennifer Love Hewitt - hasn't indicated she wants to hang out anytime soon.